Is a Compulsory Official Language Needed?

Published:Proletarskaya PravdaNo. 14 (32), January 18, 1914.

      Published according to the text inProletarskaya Pravda.Source:Lenin
	  Collected Works,

      Progress Publishers,1972,

      Moscow,Volume 20,

      pages71-73.Translated:Bernard Isaacs and The Late Joe FinebergTranscription\Markup:R. CymbalaPublic Domain:Lenin Internet Archive

      (2004).You may freely copy, distribute,
	display and perform this work; as well as make derivative and
	commercial works. Please credit “Marxists Internet
	Archive” as your source.•README

Theliberals differ from the reactionaries in that they
recognise the right to have instruction conducted in the native language,
at least in theelementaryschools. But they are completely at one
with the reactionaries on the point that a compulsory official language is
necessary.

Whatdoes a compulsory official language mean? In practice, it means
that the language of the Great Russians, who are aminorityof the
population of Russia, is imposed upon all the rest of the population of
Russia. In every school the teaching of the official language must beobligatory. All official correspondence must be conducted in the
official language, not in the language of the local population.

Onwhat grounds do the parties who advocate a compulsory official
language justify its necessity?

The“arguments” of the Black Hundreds are curt, of course. They say:
All non-Russians should be ruled with a rod of iron to keep them from
“getting out of hand”. Russia must be indivisible, and all the peoples
must submit to Great-Russian rule, for it was the Great Russians who built
up and united the land of Russia. Hence, the language of the ruling class
must be the compulsory official language. The Purishkeviches would not mind
having the “local lingoes” banned altogether; although they are spoken by
about 60 per cent of Russia’s total population.

Theattitude of the liberals is much more “cultured” and
“refined”. They are for permitting the use of the native languages within
certain limits (for example, in the elementary schools). At the same time
they advocate an obligatory official language, which, they say, is
necessary in the interests of “culture”, in the interests of a “united”
and “indivisible” Russia, and so forth.

“Statehoodis the affirmation of cultural unity.... An
   official language is an essential constituent of state
   culture.... Statehood is based on unity of authority, the official language
   being an instrument of that unity. The official language possesses the same
   compulsory and universally coercive power as all other forms of
   statehood....“IfRussia is to remain united and indivisible, we must
   firmly insist on the political expediency of the Russian literary
   language.”

“Statehoodis the affirmation of cultural unity.... An
   official language is an essential constituent of state
   culture.... Statehood is based on unity of authority, the official language
   being an instrument of that unity. The official language possesses the same
   compulsory and universally coercive power as all other forms of
   statehood....

“IfRussia is to remain united and indivisible, we must
   firmly insist on the political expediency of the Russian literary
   language.”

Thisis the typical philosophy of a liberal on the necessity of an
official language.

Wehave quoted the above passage from an article by Mr. S. Patrashkin
in the liberal newspaperDyen[1](No. 7). For quite understandable reasons, the
Black-HundredNovoye Vremyarewarded the author of these ideas
with a resounding kiss. Mr. Patrashkin expresses “very sound ideas”,
Menshikov’s newspaper stated (No. 13588). Another paper the Black Hundreds
are constantly praising for such very “sound” ideas is the
national-liberalRusskaya
Mysl.[2]And how can they help praising them when the liberals,
with the aid of “cultured” arguments, are advocating things that please
theNovoye Vremyapeople so much?

Russianis a great and mighty language, the liberals tell us. Don’t you
want everybody who lives in the border regions of Russia to know this great
and mighty language? Don’t you see that the Russian language will enrich
the literature of the non-Russians, put great treasures of culture within
their reach, and so forth?

Thatis all true, gentlemen, we say in reply to the liberals. We know
better than you do that the language of Turgenev, Tolstoy, Dobrolyubov and
Chernyshevsky is a great and mighty one. We desire more than you do that
the closest possible intercourse and fraternal unity should be established
between the oppressed classes of all the nations that inhabit Russia,
without any discrimination. And we, of course, are in favour of every
inhabitant of Russia having the opportunity to learn the great Russian
language.

Whatwe do not want is the element ofcoercion. We do not want
to have people driven into paradise with a cudgel; for no matter how many
fine phrases about “culture” you may utter, acompulsoryofficial language involves coercion, the use of the cudgel. We do not think
that the great and mighty Russian language needs anyone having to study it
bysheer compulsion. We are convinced that the developmentof capitalism in Russia, and the whole course of social life in general,
are tending to bring all nations closer together. Hundreds of thousands of
people are moving from one end of Russia to another; the different national
populations are intermingling; exclusiveness and national conservatism must
disappear. People whose conditions of life and work make it necessary for
them to know the Russian language will learn it without being forced to do
so. But coercion (the cudgel) will have only one result: it will hinder the
great and mighty Russian language from spreading to other national groups,
and, most important of all, it will sharpen antagonism, cause friction in a
million new forms, increase resentment, mutual misunderstanding, and so on.

Whowants that sort of thing? Not the Russian people, not the Russian
democrats. They do not recognise national oppressionin any form,
even in “the interests of Russian culture and statehood”.

Thatis why Russian Marxists say that there must benocompulsory official language, that the population must be provided with
schools where teaching will be carried on in all the local languages, that
a fundamental law must be introduced in the constitution declaring invalid
all privileges of any one nation and all violations of the rights of
national minorities.

[1]Dyen(The Day)—a daily newspaper of a
liberal-bourgeois trend, published in St. Petersburg from 1912. Among its
contributors were Menshevik liquidators, who took over complete control of
the paper after February 1917. Closed down by the Revolutionary Military
Committee of the Petrograd Soviet on October 26 (November 8), 1917.

[2]RusskayaMysl(Russian Thought)—a monthly journal
of the liberal bourgeoisie, published in Moscow from 1880. After the 1905
Revolution it became the organ of the Right wing of the Cadet Party. During
that period Lenin called theRusskaya Mysl“Chernosotennaya
Mysl” (Black-Hundred Thought). The journal closed down in
the middle of 1918.